Garbage truck causes extra walk

Until about 20 years ago, residents put their garbage bins just outside their front gates and local council workers emptied them into the transport vehicles and returned the empty bins to the property line where they found them.

When Gosford Council gave a private company the monopoly to do the waste collection with modern, high-tech equipment, ratepayers were required to place their rubbish bins at the kerbside (if they had the luxury of a kerbside) and retrieve them when they were emptied.

The public obediently walked the extra metres without complaint and the waste collection enjoyed a satisfactory profit.

Some drivers of waste collection trucks saw an opportunity of saving time and money for their employer by driving forward while shaking the rubbish out of the bins and dropping the empty bins further down the road.

On March 16, 2010, a driver employed this practice and dropped the empty bins up to 3.7 metres away from where they found them.

Each ratepayer had to walk an extra seven metres to get their bin back where he left it.

Surely Gosford Council must take action before 70,000 ratepayers have to walk up to seven metres per week to boost the profits of the domestic waste collection.

Fax, 17 Mar 2010 John Collins, Woy Woy